Amid the deepening gloom in the car industry, dealers have found one way to gouge for profit: hybrids.
Hybridcars.com reports U.S. sales grew 38 percent to 350,000 units last year, with Toyota dominating the market. But if you want to buy a hybrid version of the Ford Escape, Saturn Vue, Chevrolet Tahoe or GMC Yukon, you can expect to shell out $3,000 to $5,000 premiums that go right into dealership coffers. You can also expect to sit on a waiting list.
Will you recoup these premiums in gas savings over the life of the vehicle? It's not likely.
Is this bait and switch? Read after the jump.
Supplies of hybrids are plentiful in some markets, wrenchingly tight in others. The success of Toyota's Prius has kept its production capacity up. A major San Francisco Bay area Chevrolet dealership we contacted had one hybrid Tahoe in stock. The gas-powered version sold for roughly $38,000. They hybrid cost a little over $52,000. A Bay-area Saturn dealership reported that the wait for a hybrid Vue is roughly six to eight weeks, though the price premium was only about $3,000 over the cost of the gasoline version.
A spokesman for Ford said that production capacity of the hybrid Escape is limited, though it will be expanding with the introduction of two more hybrids next year. "We have a capability to product them which limits us to about 24,000 a year," he said. "They're hard to find."
Soaring gas prices have boosted demand for hybrids. And as National Public Radio reports, U.S. manufacturing capacity is maxed. What's galling is that carmakers continue to push these hybrids -- especially SUVs -- in advertising. Greenwashing an entire company with token products has proven to be enormously successful, and not only for the car industry, but for just about anyone else.
To be sure, batteries have been in short supply. And automakers didn't anticipate the price of gas when hybrid production plans were inked. Even so, the markup at dealerships is shameless.
Sources: NPR, WillametteLive, Hybridcars.com
*Photo: Colorado Luis, licensed through Creative Commons. *
